For those of you feeding your dogs BARF how many patties do you feed your dog a day and at what times? How do you adjust the amount/times as the pup gets older.

I was planning to try and do a full raw food diet or mix between 4 days raw and 3 days Orijen. Any advice would be excellent. Also for those feeding BARF, what flavors have your dogs tend to stay with?

Hi Mackenzie, in the US we have a lot of options that are prepared BARF diets. If you have a small dog or don't mind the expense, the pre-made patties are an easy option. There are also many brands that sell in rolls or "chubs." We purchase 10 pound chubs since we have four dogs to feed. They also come in 2 and 5 pound rolls to be more managable.

We feed kibble in the morning and raw at night. I think your days on and off will work also. The most important thing to keep in mind is to not mix kibble and raw in the same meal.

TeresaC wrote:Hi Mackenzie, in the US we have a lot of options that are prepared BARF diets. If you have a small dog or don't mind the expense, the pre-made patties are an easy option. There are also many brands that sell in rolls or "chubs." We purchase 10 pound chubs since we have four dogs to feed. They also come in 2 and 5 pound rolls to be more managable.

We feed kibble in the morning and raw at night. I think your days on and off will work also. The most important thing to keep in mind is to not mix kibble and raw in the same meal.

I will be getting the sister of Mackenzie's pup and LOVE this idea! I'm not confident that I could do raw-from-scratch all the time and do it well and correctly to balance a diet. But I do think the raw natural diet is best (but only if done right)

I think this is a great way to get the best of both worlds! The balanced and reliable convenience of high quality kibble and the natural, healthy and easily digestible raw diet.

I work 4 days a week so I'll feed kibble on work days and raw on days off.

My sister currently owns a toy poodle and she has learnt over the past fews years that when lucy (the toy poodle) is feeling sick or doesn't have enough fibre in her diet, she will go off and eat weeds out of the grass or if there is any parsley or basil growing. she will eat mostly the whole plant.

Also my friend who owns a husky and a boarder collie had noticed the same problem. so when he cooked them scrambled eggs he would put a lot of salad like lettuces, spinach, cabbage, parsley and basil. which mostly stopped the dogs from eating plants that were outside which could be covered in pesticides etc.

"It is two wolves; and he that runs after her is called Skoll; she fears him, and he shall take her. But he that leaps before her is called HatiHródvitnisson. He is eager to seize the moon; and so it must be." -Prose Edda

I know this died down and I am digging it back up but I didnt want to make another topic.
I am finally going to be able to do the raw diet dog food again for my two dogs and I am so freaking happy!
I am going to have a friend see if he can hunt the meat. Which would range from deer, squirral, bird (just about any type...not those nasty ones), and fish. Just no hogs!

Its suppose to be for every 50 pounds your dog weighs, you feed 1 pound of meat. Then there is a math problem to find out the veggies. I am giving some potatoes, or sweet potatoes. Which ever is cheaper, then adding on the veggies. For Bella its 60% of meat/organ/bones, 30% veggies, 10% grain.
To find out a round about math you can use this math problem
Bella weighs around 90 pounds
90 * 16= 1440 ounces she ways
1440 * .02 =28.8 ounces of food she should eat a day
28.8 * .6 = 17.28 ounces of meat a day
28.8 * .3 = 8.64 veggies a day
28.8 * .1 = 2.88 grain a day

all ounces. Its simple and thats what we used in the past.

As soon as I get the money and he gets the meat. I will take pictures

LuLu has been missing for about 6 months. lost in my area and it hits close to home, though animals have been found across the world. So if you have seen this dog please let one of these people knowhttp://www.facebook.com/HelpFindLulu

There really is no need to feed veggies as dogs are carnivores. However, many people seem to wish to feed them. However, I wouldnt recommend grains or cereals. Those are what cause a lot of the problems with commerical dog food, and they would never feature in a dog/wolf's diet in the wild.

- Fiona -

The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog. - Ambrose Bierce

I've fed all my dogs,(17 - various breeds, all rescues) on raw meat and bones. I've always based it on what they'd be likely to kill in the wild ie; rabbits, small deer, lambs, chickens and other small game. I don't feed fuit, veg or especially not grain as canines do not require these and can metabolise all their vitamins and minerals from raw meat and bones - I guess the only exception would be the contents of the intestines of the carcasses which has been pre digested by the animal in question.
I feed Yiska, my 15 month Tamaskan on this diet and have done since I got her at 8 weeks.

I started her on chicken wing-tips + ground chicken or salmon or lamb with a small amount of offal once a week and gradually built up to larger cuts of chicken etc and then whole carcasses when she had all her adult teeth. Her first Christmas present was a small Roe deer which she happily dragged around the garden for 2 weeks until she finished it - skin, skull and all!

In the winter I feed whole carcasses - my dogs have always had their own fridge and freezer so when they've finished I wash it off and stick it back in the fridge and just keep hauling it out til it's gone or they lose interest. If the weather is really cold I just leave it out and they usually pile snow on it or in Yiska's case, she takes her dog blanket and drags that over the top to 'hide' it if the grounds too hard to dig.

In the summer, because of the risk of it getting fly blown I feed carcasses butchered down and throw away anything that's left. My local butcher gives me all his chicken carcasses,(loads of meat left on them as humans are so picky, lol) and as much lamb waste as I want - I get it all for free as he, like all butchers has to pay for disposal of his waste by weight/container size so we're doing each other a favour. I supplement this with the odd rabbit, and whole fresh water fish.

Yiska still gets fed twice a day but will go to once a day at 18 months - though she pretty much regulates what she eats, if she's not hungry she buries it!

Everyone comments on how fit she looks and the fact that she doesn't have 'dog breath', smell doggy and her poo is small, dry and crumbly with no odour to speak of,(sorry, if that's a bit too much info!)

She's certainly got loads of energy! Her days are spent running round on the farm from 7:30 - 4:30 and when she's not doing that she comes surfing and snowboarding with me. She's a great swimmer and surfer and has just earned herself her very own surf board,(saves mine getting hairy!)

Hope this might be helpful to anyone who wants to feed raw meat and bones but has reservations. Incidentally I do worm regularly and take a stool sample to the vet once or twice a year for a worm count/analysis - have never had any problems with any of my dogs and the rescues were all much calmer and easier to train once they were on rmb.

In terms of growth, Yiska is up to breed standard for an adult bitch - she's currently 64cm/25" at the shoulder and weighs 27kg/59 lbs.

We feed raw most of the time, ever since Raksha was a puppy. Her poop is many times bigger when she is on kibble. Shows how the kibble we feed her cannot compare to raw diet, despite the pet food manufacturers claiming that it has "everything a dog needs, complete, balanced, ..." evidently it has too much undigestible fillers;]

Bones have never been a problem, even cooked ones, which our neighbours occasionally offer to Raksha.
Our favourite butcher uses almost all parts of animal body, but he has no use for the biggest cow bones, which he gives us for our dog. Saying "And here is something for your chihuahua" One such bone lasts Raksha for many happy days...

Hi
living out in the sticks in rural Bulgaria, good quality dog food is very hard to come by, I dont know any of the branded stuff out here or how good it is, so I tend to feed my two tams on raw chicken wings, fish (whitebait) and raw goosemeat, they love it, but can any one tell me if there are any problems with this diet.

And I heard that most dogs can still digest raw meats and certain bones that the wolves subsist on. I know that the feral Carolina dogs and other pariah-type dogs do well subsisting on rodents. Either way, the idea that a dog cannot eat rich meat like the wolves can is a misconception and I've seen some do it a lot. Most breeds just can't consume too much or they would vomit such as the small chihuahua breeds but a larger like a Siberian husky can certainly consume a load (not as much as a wolf but still a crazy load)! I just think that some breeds can and maybe some can't and that what a dog eats depends what they've grown used to. I would never feed kibbles to any dog, partly cuz I don't really like those commercial dog food. It's insane how some people think that dogs can't eat raw meat when they've been eating it for thousands of years even before commercial dog food was introduced.

This thread has been an eye-opener! I thought a BARF diet was what every dog owner should be aiming for and that giving dogs any type of bones (especially hollow chicken bones) was reckless and stupid! While I still have a huge amount of Arden Grange kibble to work my way through I'm going to try and start Maya off on chicken legs (or frames if my butcher does his own carving) free fish from my next door neighbour and eggs. Will check out other options when the kibble starts running out.

skyedream wrote:This thread has been an eye-opener! I thought a BARF diet was what every dog owner should be aiming for and that giving dogs any type of bones (especially hollow chicken bones) was reckless and stupid! While I still have a huge amount of Arden Grange kibble to work my way through I'm going to try and start Maya off on chicken legs (or frames if my butcher does his own carving) free fish from my next door neighbour and eggs. Will check out other options when the kibble starts running out.

Aww, you are lucky to have such neighbour;] Raksha would stand on her head for fish!

But I don't think I can feed her fish all the time? Is it bad for them? Or just unnatural? I don't even know if she'll eat it yet! She's not a fussy eater but she's never even seen a whole fish before! She must think all fish are can shaped and their presence is announced by the whirr of the electric can opener!

skyedream wrote:She must think all fish are can shaped and their presence is announced by the whirr of the electric can opener!

i used to think the same about my cats sam played with his first fish and then had the bright idea of hiding it in MY bed

There’s a battle between two wolves inside us all.
One is Evil. It’s anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego.
The other is Good. It’s joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness and truth.

The wolf that wins? The one you feed!

~ Cherokee Proverb

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity... I'm not sure about the former.

Feeding fish all the time: I think that sled dogs in Jack London stories were fed only with frozen fish. Is that a reliable source of information? I guess not, he's and artist and as such not to be trusted...

Finding out that fish is edible: Our story with a Carp:
There is a hobby competition for CSW owners, called "Kapr Karla Hartla," kapr means Carp fish, Karel Hartl is on of the founding people of the CSW experiment. I think of him as the "father" of the breed. So, the first price in the competition is a live Carp. And this year, my father, competing with Raksha, completely unexpectedly won the first place. (Karel Hartl was watching!) So we had a living Carp in our hands and didn't know what to do with it, since we don't like Carp meat.
The Carp had to be killed. We were at a dog training place. Those are suited for many things, killing a Carp is not one of them. Dad finally found a piece of a plank and butchered the fish. Raksha watched, very curious about the whole thing. Then we all got into our car, got home, shown off our bloody prize to mom, tried to think of what to do with it. Does our cat like fish? Can he eat it all, the Carp being almost his size?
Then a winning idea came to us, maybe Raksha would eat it! It was also her prize, after all. We didn't get our hopes too high though, because she has never had a fish before. Would she be able to stand the smell? And how about the taste? We know that Carp meat isn't too tasty...
So Raksha was presented with the fish. She grabbed it without hesitation. I daresay her expression was saying "Finally!" She ran with the fish in her mouth to her eating spot back in our garden, and came back in less than a minute!
My doubts, whether she sniffed at it and left it out there somewhere, were dispelled immediately because she kept licking her lips incessantly, followed her path back, to see if there was even a drop of blood she could lick off the grass... Not even a single fish scale was left for our cat:D
If not fish in general, then Carps in particular are her new favourite delicatesse. She ate it so quickly and she kept licking herself with a delighted expression for at least twenty minutes afterwards.... I need to find out a way to get more Carps for her:D

Thanks for the info about the mercury, apparently my neighbour usually catches trout and salmon which are both quite low in mercury (according to the most reliable of sources - wikipedia!). Still going to stick to one a week (probably won't get that many!)

I wish I could let Maya eat out in the garden like that. But our garden isn't fenced and while she's well trained enough to stay put under normal circumstances; that wouldn't be the case if she had a bone/carcass! I once followed her around the fields where we walk for 20 minutes when she found a nice meaty bone; she wouldn't let me near her! I tried to explain to her that we could take the bone home with us but she was having none of it! The only reason I got her back in the end was because a group of women I walk Maya with came along and I got them to have a go calling for her. She usually doesn't bother much with people but this time she came running when one of the women called her and now they're best friends! She saw her yesterday for the first time in about five months and had a little excitement wee! (Which she then promptly sat in...)

Maya just ate her first chicken leg, it was hilarious! she sniffed it, licked it, then ignored it! When she went to lay down we stuck it under her nose and after licking it extensively she eventually started eating it! We now have one very happy doggy!

skyedream wrote:Maya just ate her first chicken leg, it was hilarious! she sniffed it, licked it, then ignored it! When she went to lay down we stuck it under her nose and after licking it extensively she eventually started eating it! We now have one very happy doggy!

She'll need all the natural calcium she can get right now. Hope to see her capable of trotting again

I don't know much about raw feeding, but isn't consuming raw pork bad for animals? I think I read somewhere that as long as it's fed after being frozen to a certain temp, then whatever harmful bacteria that lives in pork will die...

i don't generally feed pork, raw or cooked as a rule... it has given every dog i've had really bad diarrhea, even a tiny bit of pork... my GSD stole off me (went to wash my hands before cutting it up, came back and she stole it off the work top) and got dehydrated due to losing too much fluid but been too lethargic to go drink...i had never been so worried... she never stole off me again tho

There’s a battle between two wolves inside us all.
One is Evil. It’s anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego.
The other is Good. It’s joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness and truth.

The wolf that wins? The one you feed!

~ Cherokee Proverb

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity... I'm not sure about the former.

arianwenarie wrote:I don't know much about raw feeding, but isn't consuming raw pork bad for animals? I think I read somewhere that as long as it's fed after being frozen to a certain temp, then whatever harmful bacteria that lives in pork will die...

I never had any such problem with my family's dogs. Snoopy is fine with pork and Buddy ate them a lot since puppyhood. I don't think pork is a problem to all dogs, just some. Much like how some dogs can eat grapes while others can't.

We regurarly feed pork throats fresh or frozen, never had any problems with it. Raksha loves it;] It has lots of cartilage, so it's crunchy, also some tough ligaments, good for chewing and cleaning teeth, and bits of meat (though we steal some of the meaty bits for our cat, hehe;). I can only recommend it. We deworm her regularly, our cat just as well.

Czertice wrote:We regurarly feed pork throats fresh or frozen, never had any problems with it. Raksha loves it;] It has lots of cartilage, so it's crunchy, also some tough ligaments, good for chewing and cleaning teeth, and bits of meat (though we steal some of the meaty bits for our cat, hehe;). I can only recommend it. We deworm her regularly, our cat just as well.

I agree with you completely
Pork and tough ligaments are good if you know what you're feeding to the animal.

I know for people you have to cook pork well as it is one of the few meats that worms/parasites can get into the muscle. I don't know if modern farming methods means that pork is less likely to have worms/parasites in the meat, or as long as you regularly worm your dog it is not a problem. Would freezing kill anything in the meat?

JulieSmith wrote:I know for people you have to cook pork well as it is one of the few meats that worms/parasites can get into the muscle. I don't know if modern farming methods means that pork is less likely to have worms/parasites in the meat, or as long as you regularly worm your dog it is not a problem. Would freezing kill anything in the meat?

Eukaryotic parasits like the worms would be killed but most of the prokaryotes would just be slown down and won't expand their colonies too rapidly. That's why we keep things in freezers

My Sibes get a mix of raw human grade meat and fish, raw and sometimes cooked vegitables, Turkey necks (raw), the odd uncooked bone, occassionaly raw eggs (high in protien but the egg white is suppose to stop the absorbsion of other important nutrients - so i dont feed very often) and the odd table scrap together in conjunction with a good quality kibble. I'm not a big fan of kibble but I'm not financially able to avoid it completely and a quality kibble provides a "nutrient balanced" approach. .....SO HOPEFULLY i'VE GOT ALL THE BASES COVERED. A dog can synthesise many amino acids but there are some it must recieve from its diet.

They never get grapes sultanas onions cooked bones etc......I live in Australlia and due to over zealous import laws they tend to iradiate most imported kibbles into our market........so i would suggest fellow Aussies be carefull with what brand of kibble you feed. I'm probably a little over cautious but there are alternative brands on the market that don't get "nuked" the minute they hit Australian shores. I'm not sure whether is's been linked anywhere else but i found this site informative. http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=main

Edit
Sylvaen wrote somewhere on the forums to not feed kibble and raw in the same meal. I have never heard of this but it sounds like good practice. I always feed raw meat for a while then alternate with kibble so its not been an issue. I do however feed the dogs beet roots and kidney beens etc. mixed in with kibble occasionally

Sibe wrote:
Edit
Sylvaen wrote somewhere on the forums to not feed kibble and raw in the same meal. I have never heard of this but it sounds like good practice. I always feed raw meat for a while then alternate with kibble so its not been an issue. I do however feed the dogs beet roots and kidney beens etc. mixed in with kibble occasionally

Yeah, Debby is absolutely correct. Don't do that or that'd be like you drinking milk mixed with orange juice. It's basically a formula for diarrhea! I know because I've made that mistake on my Buddy back in 1995 in which I threw him some dog-food pellets not knowing that he had previously eaten a raw chicken leg and he ended up with severe diarrhea that evening. As for cooked fruits like marinated cucumber or salads like the kidney beans, they're fine to mix with the kibble as long as you did not give them raw meat prior to that within the one hour

fangjingtuanlucas wrote:Yeah, Debby is absolutely correct. Don't do that or that'd be like you drinking milk mixed with orange juice. It's basically a formula for diarrhea! I know because I've made that mistake on my Buddy back in 1995 in which I threw him some dog-food pellets not knowing that he had previously eaten a raw chicken leg and he ended up with severe diarrhea that evening. As for cooked fruits like marinated cucumber or salads like the kidney beans, they're fine to mix with the kibble as long as you did not give them raw meat prior to that within the one hour

Actually, it's not so much the diarrhea but, rather, the fact that kibble takes longer to digest properly. All raw meat can be expected to contain some traces of bacteria (which are killed by cooking) but raw meat is usually digested relatively quickly by the dog's stomach acids (as nature intended) so that the dog can eat it without getting sick (the same goes for meat that is slightly 'off' - it still won't do much, if any, serious harm to the dog compared to if a human were to eat it). However, processed foods take a bit longer to break-down; this means that if meat is mixed up with the kibble (or comes after the kibble), first the kibble has to be digested so the meat can pass through the system. This increases the risk of food poisoning / salmonella / etc if the meat isn't 100% fresh or has higher levels of bacteria than usual. It's better just to play it safe and not mix the two food types during the same meal, which is why it is recommended to keep raw foods (meat & veggies) separate from processed foods (kibbles).

The future lies before you, like a path of pure white snow...
Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show.

Makes me wonder if the chicken leg that my cousin threw for my Buddy was contaminated
Oh well, it's all in the past now. But yeah it was because of this experience that I never mix processed food like kibbles with raw meat for any dog.

I just got an earful last night on the RMB yahoo group. Apparently it's not good to feed raw and kibble together at all (even if they are not in the same meal). So you should be feeding either one or the other (guess which one they recommend!) as dog's digestive systems are 'dumbed down' by eating kibble and they need a period of about a month to adjust to eating raw. Also feeding things like chicken legs or wings to large breed dogs is bad because they are too small. The food should be at least as big as their heads.

So I'm stopping Maya's sunday dinner of chicken leg, duck leg or whole trout and when her bag of fish 4 dogs is finished I'm going to go ahead and switch to raw. It'll be a mixture of whole chickens, chicken frames, whole eggs (after a couple of weeks) and cooked chicken livers/hearts for training treats. Will need to check to see if it's okay to cook the organ meat or if I'm going to have to invest in a dehydrator? And after a month I'll see about adding other meat sources.

Hmm, that is intresting... but I guess it makes since. I have been a vegetarian just short of ten years and if I ate something that I didnt know had meat in it I would be hurting and if I went back to eating meat I would probably be pretty miserable for a week while my body got use to breaking down animal again.

Balto gets 500g of raw meat in the morning, and 200g of Brit Care Salmon kibble in the evening.. he weighs 26kg..
raw meal is mix of beef, veal, mutton, mostly offal and some chicken and turkey, i feed him only raw, never cooked.. and i give him everything except pork..
once in a while he get some fruits or bone to play with..

I'm thinking maybe I should try feeding salmon sashimi (fresh ones) to some of my relative's chihuahua to see if they could tolerate that like my Buddy did. It seems the tiny chihuahua breeds are better at adjusting faster than the larger arctic breeds or maybe I was just lucky with that pack.

My puppy is fed a raw diet and absolutely loves it. The only problem I have is trying to get him to eat raw liver. Does anyone have any tried and true ways to convince my puppy to eat it? This has been the only organ I tried to feed him and I don't know how he will react to any others. In the meantime, he does get some organs in his diet because the chicken backs he eats still has some organs attached to them.

What type of liver was it? If it was beef, you could try chicken, etc. If he just doesn't like it raw, you could try boiling it, then baking it in the oven. We make liver treats this way and I haven't found a dog yet that won't eat them. Granted it's not the largest sample size in the world, but still. xD

It was calf liver. I offered him chicken liver and kidney and he didn't hesitate at all to eat them. Would cooking the liver take away from its nutritional value versus raw? Thanks for the reply by the way!

I think cooking does affect its nutritional value. You could try flash frying it so its cooked on the outside but still raw on the inside. Mine are not keen on liver, but they will eat it happily if it is frozen.

- Fiona -

The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog. - Ambrose Bierce